1. Field of the Invention
The present arrangement concerns a channel selection arrangement for the tuners of two or more receiving devices, such as television receivers and video cassette recorders, which is preferably incorporated in a common or unified remote control transmitter. In particular, the invention concerns a so called "skip memory" arrangement storing a list of channels to be "stepped over" during a scanning type channel selection operation which can be used for controlling the channel selection of two or receiving devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Manufacturers have traditionally provided remote control systems for television receivers. As the popularity of television accessories such as video cassette recorders and video disc players has grown, manufacturers have also started to provide individual remote control systems for the television accessories. As a result, a user may have three or more individual remote control transmitters. The use of individual remote control transmitters is cumbersome. Moreover, the cost of a remote control arrangement where each television device has its own remote control transmitter is expensive to the user. Accordingly, a single, unified remote control transmitter which is capable of controlling more than one television device is highly desirable for users which own a number of television devices with remote control provisions.
The ability to select channels by depressing either a "channel up" or "channel down" key is a common feature in remote control systems for television receivers and is also starting to be used in remote control systems for video cassette recorders. Such systems often include a "skip memory", for storing a list indicating those channels which are preferred and those channels which are not preferred, i.e., those which are to be "skipped" over, in channel selection. When a user depresses a "channel up" or the "channel down" key, memory locations of the skip memory corresponding to respective channels are sequentially addressed and then interrogated until a memory location is reached in which an indication that the respective channel is preferred is reached. At that point, the search stops and the channel corresponding to the presently addressed memory is tuned.